Second group of Rohingya refugees land on Indonesia beach after weeks at sea | 24CA News
For the second time in two days, a gaggle of weak and exhausted Rohingya Muslims landed on a seaside in Indonesia’s northernmost province of Aceh on Monday after weeks at sea, officers mentioned.
At least 185 males, ladies and youngsters disembarked from a rickety wood boat at nightfall on Ujong Pie seaside at Muara Tiga, a coastal village in Aceh’s Pidie district, mentioned native police chief Fauzi, who goes by a single identify.
“They are very weak because of dehydration and exhaustion after weeks at sea,” Fauzi mentioned.
They had been taken to the village corridor and can keep there whereas they obtain assist from residents, well being staff and others.
Fauzi mentioned that immigration officers and police had been attempting to determine the refugees to find out in the event that they had been from the group of 190 Rohingya who had been reported by United Nations to be drifting in a small boat within the Andaman Sea for a month.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Friday urged nations to rescue the refugees, saying reviews indicated they had been in dire situation with inadequate meals or water.
“Many are women and children, with reports of up to 20 people dying on the unseaworthy vessel during the journey,” the company mentioned.
Also on Friday, one other group of 58 Rohingya — all males — arrived in Ladong village in Aceh Besar district.
In search of a greater life
Azharul Husna, who heads the Aceh department of KontraS, an Indonesian rights group, mentioned Monday that the lads within the group all carried UNHCR playing cards from refugee camps in Bangladesh and had left in quest of a greater life in Malaysia.
Citing one in every of them, Husna mentioned the 58 refugees left Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, the place greater than 700,000 Rohingya from Myanmar had fled, to work on plantations in Malaysia. Their boat was broken and the engine failed, leaving them drifting at sea till they got here ashore in Aceh.
Since 2017, Myanmar safety forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and burning of 1000’s of houses belonging to Rohingya, sending them fleeing to Bangladesh and onward.
Malaysia has been a standard vacation spot for most of the refugees arriving by boat, however additionally they have been detained within the nation.
Although neighbouring Indonesia just isn’t a signatory to the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention, the UNHCR mentioned {that a} 2016 presidential regulation gives a authorized framework governing the therapy of refugees on boats in misery close to Indonesia and helps them disembark.
Last month, 219 Rohingya refugees had been rescued off the coast of North Aceh district aboard two rickety boats.
